Comic-Con 2013: 'Game of Thrones' panel recap

Production on the fourth season of Game of Thrones is now underway in Ireland, and while we may all still be recovering from the Red Wedding, several of the cast and crew are on hand in San Diego to help us move on.

John Bradley, Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Fairley, Kit Harington, Rose Leslie and Richard Madden are all due to appear on the Hall H panel. George R R Martin's taking a break from moderating duties this year, with Elvis Mitchell taking over.

23:48Some of the actors want to know what's coming, and others don't. Martin says that he's happy to tell them if they ask him, but equally he respects their decision not to follow the novels. "It's a faithful adaptation, but it's not identical."

23:47Clarke is asked about what it's like to play an empowered female character like Daenerys. "Going to drama school, I couldn't have imagined that I would get to play such a strong woman... as a young girl myself, I find her empowering."

23:44"I have to write quickly because these guys are catching up to me. The locomotive is coming up behind me, and I'm still laying the tracks," Martin quips.

23:41Asked a sweeping fan question about what it's like to film on such incredible locations with such great writing, Dinklage deadpans: "It's great. I get to be on T-shirts."

23:40The floor is being opened up for audience questions, but first we're getting to see a deleted scene from the third season, between Charles Dance and Julian Glover.

23:36Madden's talking about how happy Robb was in the episode leading up to his murder, which was (of course) intentional. The goal was to recreate the gut punch Martin wrote, where you're entirely blindsided by what happens to him. He "commits to a decision, and then you get slammed by a curveball".

23:33Clarke says that Daenerys had a lot of self-doubt, leading up to The Scene. "It's the biggest risk she's ever taken. She knows that if it doesn't work, it's game over, and if it does, game on!"

23:29Did Martin manage to stay away from TV during the Red Wedding week, as he had vowed? "I discovered that there are no countries without television," Martin says dryly. "I decided there was no escaping it, I figured I might as well just hunker down in Santa Fe, and I managed to survive the storm." He went through a smaller version of the same thing back when he originally wrote the book, when people were burning their copies in protest. "Fortunately, I don't think anybody threw their television set into the fireplace."

23:26More father-son chat now, as Dinklage praises Charles Dance. "Charles gives me a nice little shoulder rub after each take, and makes sure we still love one another as thespians. They're beautifully written scenes, and they're fascinating because Tywin is so frustrated with Tyrion."

Emilia Clarke as Daenerys in Game of Thrones.

23:23"Jon's trying to find a paternal figure," Harington says, "and they find him appealing too, they want to nurture him." He reels off a list of the various failed father figures Jon has had, and hints that there could be some role reversal in the fourth series: "What's coming up for him is, he gets sick of that, and he turns into that person. It's going to be an interesting season to play."

23:20"The moment where he turns his life around and becomes the hero was a moment of compete gut instinct," Bradley continues, explaining that he found this an interesting contrast to Sam's usual academic approach to life. "He just needs to get out of his own head."

23:19"I think Sam's always been a hero," John Bradley says. "I think one branch of bravery is to stick up for yourself, and ward off bad vibes, but it's braver sometimes to absorb punishment, and just be the underdog all the time, and I think Sam had a lot of that."

23:17Michelle Fairley had to play the 'howl' moment around 20 times on set. "It's like a piece of music, you have to work your way through it, and you don't want to overplay too early," she explains, and credits Madden with supporting her during filming.

23:15The Red Wedding discussion is beginning in earnest. Weiss gives much of the credit to Martin, saying "We knew that if we could get to that scene, and do justice to the 'Holy shit' of that moment, we'd have done something great." He jokes that they wanted people to throw their remote controls across the room in the way that he threw his book.

23:14Jason Momoa just made a surprise appearance! He dashed across the stage, gave Clarke a kiss, shouted "I'm not dead yet!" and dashed off again. Amazing.

23:12"It was a phenomenal season to film," Clarke says. "You think Daenerys is peaking in episode five, with getting her army, but the last episode was absolutely exhilarating to film."

23:11Everybody's taking a minute to congratulate Emilia Clarke for her Emmy nomination. "Bizarrely, my alarm went off really early in the hotel, and whilst trying to find things to throw at the alarm to turn it off, I saw I had a missed call from HBO."

23:07Peter Dinklage says he's planning on reading all the books once the show is over, but he doesn't want to know what's coming, so he avoids reading too far into the future. "You become a dragon," Benioff jokes, to which Dinklage responds that he can already breathe fire. We're not even slightly surprised.

23:06"[The sadness] was a character thing, but it's also an actor thing," Madden admits. "Now that it's July, and I'm thinking 'God, I'm supposed to be doing Game of Thrones'."

23:05"When we wrapped the Red Wedding, I remember hugging Michelle and Richard," says co-creator David Benioff, "thinking 'it's the last time we're going to work with them'." Richard Madden then admits that he cried "quite a lot" on the plane ride home.

23:03"I'll only take some of the bloodthirsty blame here," Martin jokes, pointing out that the show has killed characters who are still alive in the books.

23:03The entire panel kicked off with an incredible 'In Memoriam' montage, which ran through the first three seasons' impressive body count. Appropriate, given that the panel itself is an intriguing combination of living and dead characters.

23:00Half of the special effects budget apparently goes towards disguising Kit Harington's "hideous ugliness". Gotta say, the CGI is holding up well as he walks onstage.

22:58And here they come! Peter Dinklage is first on stage and receives an absolutely rapturous cheer from the crowd.